The Bride (2026)

Full review: The Bride reinvents a classic monster with a punk rock energy

I have to give Maggie Gyllenhaal credit. For her first role as director, she takes up an iconic monster, The Bride of Frankenstein, this time played by Jessie Buckley and simply called The Bride. The feature has an intense punk rock energy to it that I really enjoyed, and it's Buckley's movie through and through, though Christian Bale is good as the Monster. Buckley's performance is chaotic, unrestrained, and fierce. The movie is also very much in conversation with Mary Shelley's novel (Buckley also plays the author) and the larger Frankenstein universe especially James Whale's two Frankenstein movies for Universal in the 1930s.

The film's main flaw is that it mish mashes tones and styles, from black and white nods to the silent film era and of course, the Universal Monsters, to dance sequences that sometimes feel out of place. There's also a LOT of ideas crammed into the two-hour runtime and a plot thread or two that feels unnecessary. The feature could have benefited from tighter editing and a stronger script.

Still, this movie has a great energy to it and a Bonnie and Clyde feel, only with two classic monsters. Buckley is fantastic, and Bale is good, too. They electrify the movie, despite some of its flaws. I'm eager to watch this one again in a few months. This is an unapologetic movie that takes huge swings, so I give Gyllenhaal a lot of credit for that.